SAN JOSE, Calif. (May 10, 2018) – Working to reduce the pain and increase the gain of marketing technology acquisition and deployment, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council will launch a new Solution Sourcing Center (SSC) in 2018 in partnership with leading vendors and domain experts.

The online resource will activate and engage the council’s global membership base of 15,000 senior marketers in the review, evaluation and selection of marketing technology solutions and cloud-based services. It will draw on trusted peer-based experience, knowledge, insight and procurement practices, as well as business use cases that evidence the value and ROI of marketing technology investments.

In support of the SSC mission, the CMO Council is teaming with CabinetM to offer access to CabinetM’s Marketing Technology Management platform through the Solution Sourcing Center.  The CabinetM platform will provide CMO Council members with the infrastructure to track and manage marketing technology use across the enterprise, and provide the foundation for creating a rational marketing technology and automation strategy. In today’s complex technology environment where performance is frequently tied to how well individual technology products are integrated, understanding and actively managing the entire marketing technology stack is essential to achieving results and ROI from any technology implementation.

The subscription-based CabinetM platform is designed to help marketing teams optimize spend and the performance of their marketing stacks by streamlining workflow management among and between teams around planning, researching and management of marketing technology strategy, acquisition and implementation. The five platform components include:

• Collaboration architecture to support working at an individual, team or enterprise level.


• Marketing stack framework to map, track and manage acquired and internally developed technology


• Contract tracking system to manage subscription renewals and cross-functional purchase agreements


• Messaging and reporting functionality, based on permissions, to promote cross-functional visibility of technology efforts


• Enterprise SkillStack environment to manage internal technology proficiency

CabinetM has a database of more than 8,500 tools across MarTech, AdTech and SalesTech product categories. The platform helps teams build marketing stacks to track and manage the tools they buy, build and retire. The reporting capability allows organizations to identify redundant products, expense and performance issues and gaps in their marketing technology suite. Enterprise wide visibility helps eliminate duplicate spend and time wasted evaluating and testing products that are already in use or have been rejected by other teams in the organization.

The online Solution Sourcing Center will ultimately become a dedicated micro-site and featured resource on the CMO Council master site, which attracts 45,000 page views a month. CMO Council members control more than $500 billion in annual marketing expenditures and, according to Gartner, CMOs will influence more IT spend than the CIO by 2020.

According to IDC, CMOs (and their digital, data, advertising, eCommerce and CX leaders) will drive marketing technology spending to $32.3B by 2018, reaching a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4%.  From 2014 to 2018, marketing technology spending will reach $130 billion for the five-year period.

Many of these expenditures are allocated to applications (most in the Cloud) focused on marketing operations and measurement, campaign execution, CRM, web site and data analytics, content marketing, email and mobile messaging, omni-channel experience, lead acquisition, sales productivity, product lifecycle management, digital asset management, social media, search marketing, programmatic ad buying, and other critical areas under the CMO remit.

“As companies embark on digital transformation efforts to provide unified and personal customer experiences across all touch points and devices, virtually every department in the company is now leveraging marketing technology,” said Anita Brearton, CabinetM CEO. “Lack of technology coordination and oversight is leading to escalating costs, security risk, inconsistent results and a lot of frustration.”

The CMO Council’s Solution Sourcing Center will offer marketing and sales automation vendors, as well as technology integration/digital transformation consultants, a valuable channel to connect and interact with a global audience of senior marketers and functional area chiefs, including procurement, finance, sales, channel, IT and line of business. Multiple categories of marketing solutions, applications and hosted services will be addressed. These include:

• Marketing Operations & Performance Measurement


• Campaign Execution & Management (GTM)


• Data Integration and Management


• Analytics, Insights and Intelligence


• Sales Operations Effectiveness (+CRM)


• Channel & Partner Management


• Digital Engagement


• Omni-Channel Commerce


• Events & Experiential Marketing


• Advertising Technology


• Customer Experience and Engagement


• Content Creation & Asset Management


• Marketing Supply Chain Management


• Brand Safety & Protection

Marketing solution providers and marketing technology integrators (more than 5,000) will have the ability to profile their companies and apps, provide demos and video endorsements from customers, as well as have one of the CMO Council review board members (transitioning or retired chief marketers) do a preliminary evaluation or “first look.” Council members globally will be invited to post comments, recommendations and relate deployment experiences.

Areas of conversation, commentary and rating of solutions will be password-protected for CMO Council member or subscriber access only. The Council will also work with third-party experts to provide buyer guides, online tutorials, workshops and webinars around best practices to solution selection and implementation.

Services and content offered by the SSC

• Complete marketing technology lifecycle management through CabinetM


• Vendor profiles and application descriptions


• Video introductions, Q+A segment and/or self-running demos


• Software buying guides and insights


• Evaluation, selection and purchasing criteria


• Customer use cases and crowd-sourced commentary


• Peer-based reviews, insight and learning


• Best practice approaches to deployment and use


• Thought leadership research and global knowledge transfer


• Interactive webinars with experts and consultants


• Digital marketing training and talent development


• Insights into marketing technology spend by volume, category, vendor, product, industry

About the CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 15,000-plus members control more than $500 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include more than 65,000 global marketing and sales executives in more than 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The CMO Council's strategic interest groups include the Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE).